The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) is a regional network that provides research support to South Asian researchers and institutions interested in the inter-connections among development, natural resource use and the environment. SANDEE is currently inviting concept notes for policy research on Managing Environmental Changes. Selected concept notes will lead to an invitation to submit full research proposals that will be further reviewed for grant consideration.

Major Themes

SANDEE requests research concept notes in three prioritized areas:

Policies and Instruments for Greener Development: Governments put forward a variety of policies and regulations to manage environmental problems. In order to understand whether these strategies enhance sustainable development, this thematic area evaluates: a) the role of regulatory and market mechanisms in policy compliance; b) the impacts of environmental programs and policies; and, c) the development of cities as sustainable engines of growth.

Current examples of SANDEE research under this theme include studies of compliance with environmental regulations in garments, tanneries and other polluting industries and assessments of policies and programs that promote clean energy, adoption of environmentally friendly technology and green development.

Ecosystems Management:Ecosystems provide provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services that are being lost at an accelerating rate. Ecosystems research examines: a) contributions of services to livelihoods, particularly of vulnerable groups; b) scale and institutional issues in managing trade-offs associated with resource use; c) policies for conserving services such as biodiversity that are not substitutable.

On-going research includes analysis of human-wildlife conflict, payments for ecosystem services and economic trade-offs associated with land-use and management changes.

Economics of Climate Change: With climate change, South Asia is expected to get warmer and experience more extreme events. SANDEE's climate portfolio focuses on: a) the efficacy of alternate adaptation strategies and their local co-benefits; b) programs, institutions and policies that support low carbon growth and long-term adjustment to climate change; and c) access and distributional issues related to renewable energy resources.

Ongoing studies assess adaptations strategies through water and agricultural management and evaluate mitigation programs such as REDD+ and renewable energy interventions.

Priority Considerations

Selected research concept notes that focus on transboundary areas and cross-country comparative analyses will be provided proposal development support in order to enable teams to understand cross country issues and travel to study areas for developing full proposals. SANDEE will also try to facilitate cross-county team development.

Innovative proposals outside the three themes listed above and without a cross country components will also be considered if these have strong policy implications.

Concept notes are generally no longer than 1500 words. They are evaluated on their academic merit and policy significance. While SANDEE focuses on environmental management, proposals have to include a strong economics component.

Grants are likely to be in the range of USD 20,000- 40,000 over a one to two-year period. Larger grants will be reserved for teams that are multidisciplinary and involve two or more countries in the region. Institutional affiliation is required for receiving support.

about sandee

SANDEE's mission is to strengthen the capacity of individuals and institutions to undertake research on the inter-linkages among economic development, poverty, and environmental changeand to disseminate practical information that can be applied to development policies.Read More »